The rain drummed against the windows, relentless and heavy, turning the world outside into a blur of shadows and fractured light. Ash leaned back in the armchair, the cracked leather creaking beneath him. His eyes were fixed on the manuscript sprawled across the table an ancient text bound in darkened leather, its pages brittle and stained. Symbols twisted through the margins like roots, too deliberate to be decoration and too unnerving to be coincidence.
His fingers traced the edges of the pages absently. The symbols had been familiar from the moment he saw them, the same ones etched into the invitation from the cult. A sensible man might have burned the manuscript, but Ash was far from sensible. Besides, every answer had a price, and he had never shied away from paying.
He scoffed, a sound low and humorless. "Obsession suits you," he muttered, voice laced with mockery aimed at himself as much as at the unseen eyes he could almost feel on him. "Jumping at shadows and chasing ghosts."
But the manuscript refused to be dismissed so easily. Its pages seemed to pulse, symbols almost writhing if stared at for too long. The text was in an archaic dialect halfway between Old English and something older, something wrong. His eyes flickered over a passage that felt almost too deliberate:
"The Thirteenth Key opens the path unseen."
He leaned back, smirk faint and cynical. "Of course it does," he drawled. "Why wouldn't it?"
The Visitor
The knock at the door was soft but precise three measured taps, each spaced perfectly. Ash's eyes narrowed, irritation seeping into curiosity. He hadn't been followed; he'd made sure of that. Yet, as he swung the door open, irritation melted into something colder.
The man standing on the threshold was an academic by all appearances tweed coat, wire-rimmed glasses, ink stains on his cuffs. But there was something off in the way he stood, too still, too deliberate. His eyes were dark, unreadable.
"Ash Mercier?" the man inquired, voice polite but with an undertone that put Ash's instincts on edge.
"Depends," Ash replied dryly, fingers tightening subtly on the edge of the door. "Who's asking?"
"Elias Hargrove," the man said smoothly, offering a thin smile. "I believe we have a common enemy."
They sat across from each other in the study, the rain muffling all other sounds. Hargrove sipped tea calmly, every movement precise, almost rehearsed. His story unraveled with an ease that set Ash's teeth on edge tales of betrayal, of shadows moving behind closed doors, of a cult older than the city itself.
Hargrove's descriptions were too familiar to dismiss, aligning with the symbols in the manuscript, the whispers that seemed to plague Ash's nights. But the neatness of it all reeked of a lie.
"Convenient," Ash drawled, fingers steepled beneath his chin. "You just happened to escape, just happened to find me, and just happened to know exactly what I needed to hear."
Hargrove's smile didn't falter. "Paranoia is a sensible defense, Mr. Mercier. But sometimes, the enemy of your enemy is simply that."
Ash's lips twitched. "And sometimes they're just better liars."
The manuscript's pages seemed to leer at him long after Hargrove left, symbols twisting beneath the gaslight. One phrase repeated, scrawled in different scripts along the margins: "The Thirteenth Key opens the path unseen."
His eyes narrowed. A metaphor, surely. But another part whispered of a literal truth something hidden beneath the city, a gateway perhaps. The notion was absurd, but so was everything else since the invitation arrived.
He smirked, lips curling in a humorless grin. "They'll crown anyone a savior if they're desperate enough," he muttered, voice tinged with disdain. But the words itched beneath his skin, a splinter he couldn't remove.
The mirror in his study was cracked, a jagged scar through its surface. But tonight, its reflection seemed wrong. The room appeared darker, the shadows too deep. For a heartbeat, his reflection smirked when he hadn't.
Ash froze, breath catching. He stepped closer, fingers brushing the fractured glass. His reflection stared back, eyes colder than his own. Then it moved subtly, almost imperceptibly half a second out of sync.
His heart stuttered, a chill creeping down his spine. "No," he hissed, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's nothing. Just fatigue."
But when he opened them, the reflection was still wrong lips curved in a whisper of a smile.
His hands trembled, a betrayal he quickly smothered. "Parlor tricks," he sneered, voice shaking. "I've seen better." But the whisper that slithered from the mirror was unmistakable:
"Have you?"
Determined to end the game, Ash tracked Hargrove's steps to a crumbling cathedral at the city's edge, the air heavy with incense and something fouler beneath. The stained-glass windows wept red light, casting warped reflections across the floor.
Hargrove waited at the altar, alone, a shadow in the half-light. But the symbols etched into the floor told another story a ritual circle, incomplete but unmistakable. Ash's eyes narrowed.
"How cliché," he remarked. "A betrayal in a church. You really have no imagination."
Hargrove's smile was thin. "There are forces at play you cannot comprehend, Mr. Mercier. Surrender the manuscript, and this can end peacefully."
Ash's laugh echoed, brittle and sharp. "Peace is overrated."
As the gas lamps flickered and died, shadows unfurled from the walls, ink-black and hungry. The circle glowed with a sickly light, and the whispers came again louder now, almost eager. Ash gripped the manuscript tighter, eyes glinting with something feral.
"Well," he muttered, baring his teeth in a grin. "Let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes."
The last thing he saw was Hargrove's eyes pitying, regretful as the circle ignited and the ground splintered beneath him. Darkness surged, icy and suffocating, dragging him down. The manuscript slipped from his grasp, pages flaring with unholy light.
And then, silence.
But in the dark, a voice spoke ancient and cruel, reverberating through the void. "Welcome, Ash Mercier. We have been waiting."